Gemstones are today commonly made into finished gems by forming a multitude of small flat facets about the surface of the stone. This is commonly done with a faceting machine as exemplified by that one illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,818,641. These machines have an elongated gemstone holding tool, which is termed a dop or dopstick, to an end of which the stone is secured with an adhesive. The other end of the dop is mounted to orientation apparatus by which the dop may be positioned and held in numerous spacial orientations and elevations relative to a base or rotatable lap wheel. The machines also have means for measuring angular orientations of the dop with regard to x, y and z axes. Many also have means for precisely measuring linear elevations of the dop with respect to the lap wheel. So constructed, a stone may be faceted with the orientation of its dop identified and recorded in a programmed manner.
In the course of faceting stones it sometimes occurs that the stone becomes dislodged from the dop and has to be redopped, i.e. remounted. When this occurs it is essential that the stone be remounted so that its orientation with respect to the dop is as it was before, i.e., with the stone centered along the dop axis with its two major facets oriented normal to that axis. Otherwise, those facets that have already been worked (ground and polished) will be misaligned with those yet to be worked and the facets will not be presented to the machine lap wheel surface parallel thereto. In other cases where a stone is to be repolished or repaired it again becomes essential that the stone be redopped in a precise manner in order that the geometries of the facets are duplicated so that each facet will be placed flushly upon the working lap.
Heretofore, quite complex procedures and systems have been used for redopping such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,417,564. However, since faceting is frequently performed by amateurs with limited financial resources, they typically redop by trial and error. As any amateur faceter well knows, this can be an extremely tedious, time consuming and frustrating procedure since the stone must be precisely oriented in three dimensions.
Accordingly, it is to the provision of apparatuses and methods for mounting gemstones to faceting machines and to improved apparatuses and methods of faceting that alleviates the just described problems that the present invention is primarily directed.